Maidan Wardak airstrike leaves seven civilians dead

AT Monitoring Desk
KABUL: At least seven civilians were killed in an airstrike
carried out in Burhani Khel village of Sayed Abad district of Maidan Wardak
province, a number of resident claimed.
The residents said that seven people were returning from a
funeral ceremony when their car was targeted by an airstrike in Burkhan Khel
village in Sayed Abad district, TOLONews reported.
Some angry residents to the incident staged a protest to
press the Afghan government to launch an investigation into the incident.
“They came here for a funeral ceremony. They ate food and
wanted to return. Father, son, two sons-in-law, one guest and two children were
among the seven people [killed in the airstrike],” said Hamed, a resident of
Sayed Abad district.
“He was a driver. His son was a student, another was a
laborer, another man was working in a company, one of them was his cousin and
was a resident of Kabul. They all were here for a funeral ceremony,” said Basir,
another resident of Sayed Abad.
“Either the government take Wardak out of the Afghanistan
map or announce its enmity with us or consider us as their people,” said Khalil
Rahman, a resident.
Previously, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense reported the
killing of at least nine Taliban members in an airstrike in Maidan
Wardak.
Also last week, a number of residents of Sayed Abad district
who had taken some injured children to a hospital in Kabul said that two
civilians were killed and eight others, most of them children, were wounded in
an airstrike in Qala-e-Amir village which is located in Tangi area of the
province.
Back in March, President Ashraf Ghani ordered the National
Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) to abide by strict rules for preventing
civilian casualties in their operations against militants. Despite that,
several incidents that targeted the civilians were reported in various regions
of the country.
On 19 July, in Bala Murghab district, Badghis province,
pro-government forces conducted an airstrike that hit a residential home and
resulted in the deaths of seven civilians, including three children and one
woman, with three more civilians injured, including a baby.
Also on July 22, at least eight civilians were killed in an
airstrike in the eastern province of Logar which was carried out by Afghan
forces to target militants, a senior official from the province said.
Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
On July 15, a senior official of Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said that 596 civilians were killed and 1,892
others wounded in clashes between government forces and the Taliban and other
attacks by militants in Afghanistan since the beginning of the current solar
year which coincides with March 21, 2019.
The CEO of the AIHRC, Musa Mahmoodi, told TOLOnews that 733
of the victims are children who have either been killed or wounded in the
conflicts during the period.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a quarterly
report on April 24 that it has documented high levels of harm to civilians but
adds that there has been a 23 percent decrease in overall civilian casualties
as compared to the same period last year and is the lowest for a first-quarter
since 2013.
The report says the UN documented 1,773 civilian casualties
(581 deaths and 1,192 injured), including 582 child casualties (150 deaths and
432 injured) between January 1 and March 31.
In the first quarter of 2018, UNAMA documented 2,305
civilian casualties (799 deaths and 1,506 injured), including 609 child casualties
(176 deaths and 433 injured), the report says.
The overall reduction of civilian casualties was driven by a
decrease in civilian casualties by suicide improvised explosive device (IED)
attacks, the report says.
UNAMA notes the particularly harsh winter conditions during
the first three months of the year, which may have contributed to this trend,
the report says.
It is unclear whether the decrease in civilian casualties
was influenced by any measures taken by parties to the conflict to better
protect civilians, or by the ongoing talks between parties to the conflict, the
report mentions. The impute from TOLONews

Original Link: http://www.afghanistantimes.af/maidan-wardak-airstrike-leaves-seven-civilians-dead/

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